Google Tools

Rather than creating a document on Google Docs, I uploaded a document that I'm working on with a co-worker. I identified her as a contributor/collaborator and we're going to try doing our "edits" this way. Uploading was very easy. I had a little trouble figuring out how to save the document with changes to my files in Word but figured it out. Now we'll see what happens as we both edit the document. This "shared" feature seems like it could be very useful for collaborative work, committee tasks or projects. The word processing feature itself on Google Docs seems kind of primitive - none of the bells and whistles that are in Microsoft Word. I missed the formatting features such as being able to select different bullet types and adjust the indentation.

With respect to the various Google tools I was interested in the Google notebook. I can see the advantage of having a notebook on the screen and being able to put items, pieces of information, URLs there when I'm researching a vacation. My husband has been using Google Earth so it was fun to acutally see where it's located and Ruth S. has talked about using Google Scholar when researching Web sites to link to our site when we're featuring particular topics such as Native Americans. It was great to see how that works.

I spent some time browsing Lifehacker. I think it must be how I process information; some of it may be my relative inexperience with technology -- I find it very difficult to wade through all the information up on the site and even find things of particular interest. When I do find some information and click on it to read more, I realize how vast the resources are and how much time I could spend just browsing. There is so much information that, at times, it seems overwhelming. I kept thinking how wonderful The Ten Things has been for me. It's distilled information about these tools into useable chunks and collected it in one place where I could find it, spend time on ti and digest some of it. Generally I found the material, when presented in this way, easy to absorb and understand. If I had to try and learn about each of these tools on my own - find my own information - I wouldn't be motivated enough or technically proficient enough to do it.